Wish Upon A Star
by debbiechan
Summary: Canon filler. Romantic foreshadowings. Characters: Ishida, Orihime, Ryuuken


Wish Upon a Star

by debbiechan

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach; Bleach belongs to Kubo Tite. Ishida and Orihime belong to one another, right?

T_hese vignettes happen inside the two-month autumn gap Kubo Tite left in his manga around chapter 229. _

"Girls these days are too sophisticated," the old woman said. "No one celebrates Tanabata with the proper spirit anymore. There are no true wishes. Girls pretend to be younger, pretend to be pure. The modern world has stained their hearts."

"Really?" Orihime held out her palm as the old woman counted coins into it. "I think it's the other way around. Girls try too hard to be like women when maybe…" Wind chimes outside the store rang in an October breeze. "When maybe they're just not ready."

The old woman behind the counter eyed Orihime's chest with suspicion. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen last month!"

Orihime and the old woman had begun talking about vegetables--the old woman saying that she hadn't tasted a decent summer cucumber in years and Orihime saying that back in primary school, she would bring her Tanabata crafts projects home and forget to eat them. The cucumber cows would shrivel and rot on their little chopstick legs, but that was fine, fine, and not a waste, because Orihime didn't like summer vegetables much; she preferred fall foods, like dried mushrooms and nuts and crunchy seeds--foods with a shelf life. Although late summer cucumbers _were_ tasty--steamed with chestnuts, that is--not raw. Orihime associated raw cucumbers with little putrefying craft project cows, so maybe that's why she wouldn't eat them raw?

At some point during Orihime's babbling, customers behind her had wandered away to other checkout lines. But the old woman seemed interested in Orihime.

"You don't seem too sophisticated. Either that or you have some real expertise acting innocent." The old woman smiled a bitter smile. "Sixteen used to be such a magical age."

It seemed to Orihime that the grocery clerk must be having a hard day but not necessarily a hard life.

"So far," Orihime said, "sixteen has been pretty magical for me."

"Tell me," the old woman said, "did you get your Tanabata wish this past summer? Did you even make one?"

Orihime gathered her grocery bags in her arms. She had been in Soul Society this past summer. "I was someplace far away," she said, "where there wasn't a festival, but I did make a wish, I really did."

"And?"

Orihime had wished for Kurosaki-kun to embrace her with joy. He had survived his battle and everyone was alive, reunited at the execution site. Why hadn't he embraced her and spun her around with new appreciation for her faith and support? Well, he _had_ been rather bloody and exhausted at the time. And Kurosaki-kun wasn't the embracing type, and, to be honest, he had grown stronger in Soul Society but his affection for Orihime may not have grown at all.

"It was a silly wish," Orihime said, blushing. "Next year I'll make a better wish."

"Years ago," the old woman said, "before greenhouses started growing plants out of season, cucumbers tasted better."

Orihime left the store wondering if being an old woman meant always missing the world experienced in one's youth. Had the taste of cucumbers changed all that much? _Maybe leeks and eggplants will taste like cherries and raisins when I am an old woman…._

On the other side of the street, a young woman was pushing a child in a stroller. The child was asleep, and Orihime tried to guess his dreams. What do little ones who have barely experienced the world dream about?

The future was a wide-open space for Orihime. It seemed bigger than all of Soul Society, where she would be yet again tomorrow, for another weekend of training with Kuchiki-san. These days were for focusing on becoming a stronger fighter; it would do no good to imagine herself as--

M_aybe one day I'll be buying fresh vegetables to cook for a family. My little boy in the stroller will look like--_

Orihime tried not to summon images of Kurosaki-kun into her fantasies anymore. Not since she had seen the way he looked at Kuchiki-san. A scene came, though, in which Orihime was pushing a stroller next to a figure who was her Tanabata wish come true. She just didn't know what he looked like.

------------

Ishida lifted a sizzling pan from the burner while waving his wrist in gentle motions. His grandfather had taught him how to stir the pan so the mackerel wouldn't stick.

The fish was a bigger one that Ishida was used to cooking. It should serve two, but Ishida had never cooked for two people before. He would need to add more miso paste and water.

"You've stocked the kitchen decently," Ryuuken said, opening and closing cabinets. "But someone with your metabolism could stand to eat twice as much as you do."

Ishida ignored his father and, with an expert eye, gauged the exact amount of water to add to the stew. Ishida knew that there were so many things he could do well, no matter what his father was implying. Ishida could feed himself, he could sew his own clothes, and he had trained alone with the sanrei glove. He had always prided himself on his autonomy.

Yet now he was relying on Ryuuken for answers, for training, for a new sense of Quincy identity.

He continued to wave his wrist over the stovetop in a regular rhythm.

"I'm surprised that you don't live off chips and carbonated beverages like other teenagers." Ryuuken leaned over Ishida's shoulder and looked at the fish. "Did you know," he said with slight amusement in his voice, "that mackerel in autumn is supposed to confer virility?"

"I've heard," Ishida said. He didn't know what to think of his father yet. The man seemed profoundly distant, even as he stood in Ishida's own kitchen.

Ryuuken sniffed the air. "Your grandfather, it seems, taught you how to cook and sew. It was as if--" Ryuuken lowered his voice to the tone he used to mutter complaints. "As if he had been preparing you to be a wife instead of a Quincy archer."

Ishida was going to be damned if he ever relied on his father for a sense of self-worth. He let the comment slide and shook a bottle of ginger juice over the fish.

-----------

After dinner, Orihime washed her face and hands and changed into a flannel nightgown.

She did not mind that there seldom were other voices ringing in her apartment, but once she was finished with prayers and telling her brother's picture all about the strange old woman at the grocery store, a cobweb at a ceiling corner began to stand out and remind her that she lived alone.

People who live alone notice the physical details of places that others overlook. Orihime had once heard Sado-kun telling Kurosaki-kun that.

It was then that the pattern of her nightgown and grains in the floorboards seemed larger. The absence in the room felt deeper.

She had a sense of belonging; she had friends and a mission to help them. Why did she feel full of such a strange yearning at night? Why did her arms want to wrap around another person?

-----------

Ishida's apartment was still fragrant with the smells of fish oils and spices. Ryuuken was long gone, and Ishida felt the tenuous sense of self that he always did after any encounter with his father.

Smart enough? Brave enough? He was those things, but would he ever feel competent enough to sit through an ordinary social event without clenching his jaw against everything expected of him?

Why did Ryuuken always make remarks about how his son was so different from other teenagers? Did he want Ishida to pretend to be someone else? Other teenagers weren't Quincy. Other teenagers were not as serious as Ishida was. Boys cracked loud jokes, and girls giggled. Some evenings by himself, Ishida could still hear his noisy classmates when he was trying to study.

All the giggling wasn't that bad, though.

Ishida flicked on a desklamp. In some ways, he knew he was a perfectly ordinary teenage boy.

He was resigned to the belief that the girl who would preoccupy his thoughts every night for the rest of his life was Inoue Orihime.

She was the only girl he had ever held in his arms. It had only been for seconds--that morning on a Seireitei rooftop when he had rescued her from a Shinigami's swinging zanpakutou.

At the time, he had been too caught up in battle mode to appreciate the moment of closeness, but he had spent many a night after Soul Society trying to remember it. The sweep of bright hair before his face, the lightness of the shape pressed against his chest.

The true closeness, though, had happened that moment she had stood apart from him and thanked him. _"Oh, it was nothing, right?"_ Her knowing smile. Her eyes full of bright admiration. Of course, she had been the first person to witness his spectacular new Quincy powers (the ones he had wanted to show off to Kurosaki!) but he had gotten the feeling that she appreciated him for who he was and not who he was pretending to be.

N_o other girl._

Before Soul Society, Ishida had considered other girls. What their skin under his fingertips might feel like.

With his discriminating eye, Ishida had watched girls gather outside classrooms, their identical uniforms accentuating their particular beauties. He had appreciated them all--this one for her round hips, that one for her shiny hair. Unlike Asano-san and other coarse boys who voiced their longings aloud, though, Ishida had never demonstrated any interest in the opposite sex. Maybe that was why so many people questioned his orientation?

Ishida scanned his desk for reading material and knew that he was not going to be able to sleep. Dinner with Ryuuken had been strange. He had expected a strained intimacy; he had not expected his father to pick through a sewing basket and make insinuations about his son's masculinity. _"Some of your finest employees sew_,_"_ Ishida had responded curtly. _"The surgeons in your hospital."_

Would his father be relieved or displeased if he knew that Ishida's nights were crowded with memories of a certain girl in a stolen Shinigami robe?

Which book to read, what school subject to distract him from thoughts of Inoue-san?

Ishida paced towards the window, rolled up the blinds and looked at the stars. He felt a chill of anticipation, as if his reborn Quincy powers might be tested soon.

There was no purer heart than Inoue's, Ishida believed. There was no lovelier person. He was going to keep his promise to Ryuuken--he would not associate with Shinigami--but if anything, anyone threatened Inoue-san, Ishida would tear across the skies to protect her.

D_on't let it come to that_. He pressed his forehead against the windowpane and felt his desperate wish being cast to the nighttime sky. _Stay safe, Inoue-san. Trust in Kurosaki to protect you._

------------

"_How do you want it to be?"_ Hacchi-san had told her. _"That is what is important."_

The night outside Orihime's window was clear, and there were many stars. She knew the name of the brightest one was her own, and it occurred to her that she should have told the old woman at the grocery store that. _Of course, the Tanabata festival is special to me. Of course my Tanabata wish is always sincere. My name is Orihime. _

She made a wry face. _Pfft._ The girl named Orihime whose Tanabata wish did not come true last year.

"_How do you want it to be?"_ A mild voice coming from a large, sedentary man. A world within a strange barrier invisible to the ordinary world. _"How do you want it to be?"_

If imagining a world made it so, then Orihime's world would be teeming with robot acrobats, and tea cakes would grow on trees, and no one would ever be lonely or sad, not ever.

Orihime unrolled her futon. The loneliness of the world seemed to spread out before her, and she adjusted her pillow, settled into her own space.

Before unpinning her hairpins, she touched her fingers on the little flower shapes and considered the power there. It would never be enough. _I can not heal the whole world._

The hairpins slid into her hands, and she placed them on the floor beside her. _Next Tanabata I will wish to heal only one heart, comfort only one loneliness._

The star Orihime shone in a corner of windowpane.

M_ine._

End

Much thanks to Charlie and Fin for beta-ing and feedback.

This little story is dedicated to Kia because she is the person most like Inoue Orihime I know. I hope all her Tanabata wishes come true. debbiechan, July 7, 2006


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